Walmart, Blizzard and EA are also not crowd funded companies. Apples to Oranges.

Giving money to something does not automatically make you exempt from the rules of the place, regardless of whether the money was for an outright purchase or donated/funded via a different mechanism.

I stand by the statement that if the rules of the place you're in are broken, it doesn't matter if you've given money, are a corporate entity, or whatever. You're beholden to those rules and if you don't like it, go elsewhere. And just because there doesn't exist an 'official' place for you to air your grievances, doesn't mean you're not allowed them. You're just not allowed them on that specific venue.

All that would be perfectly right, if what you said before were indeed the "rules of the place". Those are how you think this place should work. I, for one, would kindly appreciate if you would care to not transmute your rules into the rules.

All that would be perfectly right, if what you said before were indeed the "rules of the place". Those are how you think this place should work. I, for one, would kindly appreciate if you would care to not transmute your rules into the rules.

Those were never my rules to begin with. They were the rules all along. This is also why all the mods were enforcing it, not just me. There was no 'transmuting' done as you claim. Just because my icon is next to the forum rules doesn't mean I came up with them. I just happened to be the one that (tried to helpfully) put everything together, had it reviewed by Josh and the other mods in the hidden mod area, then having it moved to where it is now. Hell, this is also why when we banned our first user (ThymineC for reference) it was a huge back and forth in the mod section because we weren't going to act without Josh's authority in fear of giving the wrong message to a community that wasn't our own.

Early Spring - 1055: Well, I made it to Boatmurdered, and my initial impressions can be set forth in three words: What. The. F*ck.

All that would be perfectly right, if what you said before were indeed the "rules of the place". Those are how you think this place should work. I, for one, would kindly appreciate if you would care to not transmute your rules into the rules.

Those were never my rules to begin with. They were the rules all along. This is also why all the mods were enforcing it, not just me. There was no 'transmuting' done as you claim. Just because my icon is next to the forum rules doesn't mean I came up with them. I just happened to be the one that (tried to helpfully) put everything together, had it reviewed by Josh and the other mods in the hidden mod area, then having it moved to where it is now. Hell, this is also why when we banned our first user (ThymineC for reference) it was a huge back and forth in the mod section because we weren't going to act without Josh's authority in fear of giving the wrong message to a community that wasn't our own.

Well, if you really want to go down that route, then I insist. A few comments above - which lead to this discussion - you did misrepresent what part of rules of this forums have been about. In specific, here is what you said:

If you're referring to the forums, then yeah. Why? Because the forums here were not created to be about how bad he is or LT is. Much like the walmart.com site doesn't tolerate people who just go on to complain about walmart. That's why the people created walmartsucks.com. it's also why when I was a mod, I redirected people to Kickstarter or to come up with their own community on the same idea -- not just because it isn't what this place is for, but also because those venues are more 'official' than a mostly community-run forums here

And also:

I lost count of how many people got pissed off at me for either telling them off, or telling them to take their negativity elsewhere. People even attacked me directly thinking I was one of the elitists that believe Josh could do no wrong. What many didn't realize is that I was a mod to Enforce that ideal

In those comments, you sold your interpretation of whatever rules you understood were in place as if they were the rules, and by that I mean the ones by which all mods have guided their actions. That is 100% not true. You yourself has always acted by such an interpretation, no question there (for instance, you once said that "My choice would be to lock every negative thread, but then you get people complaining about 1st amendment and yadda, yadda, yadda"). But that was you, not the forum rules.

In order to avoid any confusion about what I am talking, let me be clearer: thankfully, most of the time this place has officially welcomed EXTREMELY MUCH more criticism than you represented with your words above and the rather bad Walmart analogy. More than once, other mods, Tal and even Josh himself came public specifically to reassure that yes, people could complain and criticize LT and\or Josh here as much as they wanted provided that they remained polite, civil, non-aggressive. They could, as you call it, bring here "negativity" about the game. Some people, and some mods - you included - had a different view on this, could not handle well the presence of "negativity" and tried (often succeeded) to make it go away. But such a low tolerance with the so called "negativity" has **never** been the official "rule" or policy of this place. That was you (and some others) and your interpretation of the rules, an interpretation that, as I said, contradicts what even Josh himself has said publicly more than once.

So, I kindly ask once again. Please, be careful to not make it appear that your take on people criticizing LT, Josh's choices or related things on these forums have ever been official policy. That would be simply not true. Thanks.

In those comments, you sold your interpretation of whatever rules you understood were in place as if they were the rules, and by that I mean the ones by which all mods have guided their actions. That is 100% not true. You yourself has always acted by such an interpretation, no question there (for instance, you once said that "My choice would be to lock every negative thread, but then you get people complaining about 1st amendment and yadda, yadda, yadda"). But that was you, not the forum rules.

While this was my opinion on the matter, I didn't actually do it. If I was really selling my opinion I would've actually locked every thread. I didn't. Part of the problem about being a mod is that any action I do or thing I say can easily be interpreted as 'the way'. It's also one of the reasons I stepped down because by that point, I realized I couldn't keep that separation up.

In order to avoid any confusion about what I am talking, let me be clearer: thankfully, most of the time this place has officially welcomed EXTREMELY MUCH more criticism than you represented with your words above and the rather bad Walmart analogy. More than once, other mods, Tal and even Josh himself came public specifically to reassure that yes, people could complain and criticize LT and\or Josh here as much as they wanted provided that they remained polite, civil, non-aggressive. They could, as you call it, bring here "negativity" about the game. Some people, and some mods - you included - had a different view on this, could not handle well the presence of "negativity" and tried (often succeeded) to make it go away. But such a low tolerance with the so called "negativity" has **never** been the official "rule" or policy of this place. That was you (and some others) and your interpretation of the rules, an interpretation that, as I said, contradicts what even Josh himself has said publicly more than once.

So, I kindly ask once again. Please, be careful to not make it appear that your take on people criticizing LT, Josh's choices or related things on these forums have ever been official policy. That would be simply not true. Thanks.

I can also see where some of the confusion is coming from.

During the long dark and even before it, we had a huge influx of people who were doing nothing but posting about how the game is vaporware, how it would never come out, and how we were all fools to believing in Josh being able to create a product (but not quite in such a nice method). Most of the toxicity was dealt with, and what remained, while negative, was not the same type of negativity we were trying to address. Granted, maybe our choice of words caused some of the confusion regarding what was always considered 'negative'. It was also what lead to the general unhappiness thread. We recognized that there was valid discussion from the more level-headed members, but that wasn't the type of negativity I was referring to. Maybe I lack the vocabulary to try to differentiate between the civil discussion vs. the ones that would start a new thread to say that we were basically asshats. Half the issues we had were also in regards to locking a thread and that user creating another thread of similar title just to continue the conversation (few people actually messaged us directly to inquire 'why'; but ultimately that rule was so that we wouldn't 'air our dirty laundry' out in public and when the user was called out on it, they would just rant and rave about how we were commie bastards stifling free speech). Civil discussion was usually fine (unless it was a duplicate thread, in that case it usually got merged for the most part) and most of the stuff that worse was usually removed.

I get what you're saying now though. If that's the case, then I sincerely apologize. I'll take the blame on that one since I don't/didn't have a way of explicitly explaining the difference between orderly discussion vs. outright toxicity. Maybe those words would be better now. And while I didn't care for the overwhelming discussion about even the general unhappiness, I never acted on it -- or tried not to anyways. I'll admit there were some days that tried my patience with certain members.

But at the same time, I'll even refer back to the first post I had in reference to this, way back in 2015 -- This was more for the heavy-handed criticism, and the outright toxicity. Looking back on the posts then, also shows that we pretty much came to an agreement on the idea of what was 'too much' for the most part (unless I'm interpreting the post wrong). You had the idea right then, and if you're still of the same thought; I'll once again take the blame since I still have a hard time explaining what I mean by the difference in negativity vs. negativity. (reference posts here)

Does that make any sense? Or am I still just one of those commie bastards trying to stifle rational discussion? If not, I'd rather take it to PM just so we don't clutter this thread up any more, fair?

Early Spring - 1055: Well, I made it to Boatmurdered, and my initial impressions can be set forth in three words: What. The. F*ck.

I, like many I suspect, wouldn't really know what to do with the code if we had it.

But I think in this case it's the principal of the thing. We who backed this project did so with the best of intentions and with certain expectations.

On those grounds I want that code, no matter how "jank" it may or may not be.

Does Josh plan on taking this code with him, so to speak? Wherever he plans on going to work next my guess is that that company might be interest ed in that code. Could he sell it perhaps? If he attempted to sell the IP he would be blocked from sharing it with us for free, I assume.

I really wish this near constant whiff of failure would go away so I could move on to bigger and better things and perhaps pretend this whole sorry tale never actually happened at all.

Most of the toxicity was dealt with, and what remained, while negative, was not the same type of negativity we were trying to address. Granted, maybe our choice of words caused some of the confusion regarding what was always considered 'negative'. It was also what lead to the general unhappiness thread. We recognized that there was valid discussion from the more level-headed members, but that wasn't the type of negativity I was referring to. Maybe I lack the vocabulary to try to differentiate between the civil discussion vs. the ones that would start a new thread to say that we were basically asshats.

For the record, as someone who has often been in the unfortunate position of venting concerns which can easily be considered to fall on the negative side...

...I've always been very happy with the mods here. Nothing draconian from my perspective. Honestly, even in disagreement and conflict this is an excellent community, and the only way something like that can exist is when you have integrity all the way from top to bottom.

I may not be happy with some things that have happened, or how they've happened, mostly with regards to the game itself, but Magus -- as much as I know we've probably been on opposite sides of the table - at least philosophically - more often than not, I have no complaints about how you've conducted yourself nor have I ever had the impression that your *actions* have deviated from known and established norms for the position(s) you've held. I say this realizing that the topic has somewhat progressed and that my approval likely means little to you, but even so I thought it might be worthwhile to mention given that I perceive myself as likely one of those on "the line" on the safe side of negative but not-too-toxic (I hope... at least I've never had my comments removed.)

Anyhow, cheers and happy new years folks. I'm unlikely to appear around here too much more unless we see code announcements, but it's been fun.

One last thing, for you specifically Magus: don't suppose you were on Draenor with a similar screen name on WoW a number of years ago?

So, I kindly ask once again. Please, be careful to not make it appear that your take on people criticizing LT, Josh's choices or related things on these forums have ever been official policy. That would be simply not true. Thanks.

You know, we could've made it some kind of policy among the forum staff to delineate moderator job opinion from moderator user opinion such as highlighting the text in a different color. I even brought this up years and years ago in the mod subforum since the other forum for a space-related game I frequent happens to operate with such a tradition.

This suggestion was shot down, and in retrospect, for good reason: when you indicate that a particular statement is "official moderator advice", you invite all the forum nitpickers to go searching through your post history for all the little colored snippets of text looking to interrogate you about policy inconsistencies. You create a bigger divide between the staff (who are really just dedicated participants) and the rest of the community because you suddenly lose footing in a discussion when someone can just say "no" and not need to entertain further questions.

The fact that the mods here don't constantly speak with a megaphone of authority, I think, is a good thing. We get to acknowledge differing opinions amongst ourselves, as well as accept community criticism without everything explicitly turning into a rules-lawyering debate. Staff members are people too. Additionally, Kimny, you are welcome to ask if you are unsure if a statement made by a staff member is opinion or policy, though generally if it's policy, I expect you'll be finding out in PM.